Q. Disappointed with embracing life, spirituality and trust in life given all efforts to heal self, step into personal power, share self and contribute to others fear permeates my being and unable to create. Crushing. The question is there any light and why so many years of darkness? This language I use not always picking self up yet exhausted all efforts. How can a chart help me navigate and learn what I need to do. Practical astrology needed. A. You are clearly within the grips of an old Saturn stranglehold but there are points of light, despite the tough challenges of this time. When you were born, Saturn was conjunct your Scorpio Sun and your Sagittarian Midheaven, both very hard positions that initially serve to suppress the essence of your individuality, the natural urge of your solar self to shine fully in the world. As a vehicle for patriarchal conditioning, one of the main messages is that your emotions are not acceptable, that you should control them at all costs and that there is something deeply essentially wrong about you. It has echoes of a punishing Old Testament god who is spiteful and vengeful if you deviate from the norm. And you should definitely suppress your sexuality and your power as well! Sound familiar? ....click 'Read More' below to continue...

Now as a Scorpio Sun, Pisces Moon individual it is your absolute nature to feel, to be an emotional, sensitive and powerful woman and so this conditioning pressure is so far from your essential truth that it is crippling on just about every level.

These messages are reinforced by the fact that the Sun/Saturn conjunction also squares Medusa in Aquarius and Pluto in Leo, a T-square that simultaneously rejects the wisdom and power of the sacred feminine, contributing to an enormous amount of internalised rage and, locks you up by turning transformative power into the iron grip of control.

Against this backdrop, it is natural then for an individual to create all sorts of coping mechanism, compensatory beliefs and attitudes, to call on the more obviously benevolent energies of Jupiter and other forms of light and grace.

If however, the darker, subconscious beliefs aren’t molested by deep forms of healing and therapy that dig them out by the roots, they will continue to rule.

Transiting Saturn has been in your 8th House for the last 2 and a half years, the very house to do with power, sexuality and transformation, an intentional revisiting of this territory so that you know the score, the true state of play and hopefully to take up an invitation to take responsibility for digging this old stuff out. (The fact that Saturn is leaving this house at the end of September may well coincide with a letting up of the energy)

So the over-riding impression is that, with all due respect to the healing work you’ve done, it hasn’t gone deep enough. Or the effectiveness of the techniques or the therapists has been limited by the self-sabotaging that comes with this kind of setup.

So what to do? Let’s get practical, as you requested.

Commit yourself to working with an experienced therapist who works with emotional release techniques on a weekly basis.

Practice feeling your feelings more deeply, being very watchful for thoughts, beliefs that want to minimalise, disallow or dishonour your feelings, emotional needs and energies.

Rage, rage, rage, in a safe place, expressing your own, that which you’ve carried from the womb onwards, for and from your ancestors. Watch out for its opposites, despair, depression, self-sabotaging.

Own your femininity, which is essentially very beautiful with your Pisces Moon.

Conditioned Saturn is a masculinising force, a builder of structure, defences and inner prisons.

Get in touch with your birth through primal work, breathwork etc. Chiron and Neptune are crossing your Ascendant, wanting to initiate the abundant healers in you but needing to flush out birth impressions and absorbed victimhood from your mother in order to do so.

Own your dark goddesses, your deep sacred feminine. Persephone, Hekate and Lilith are on the move and wanting to be fully claimed. They are more than an equal to the old Saturn. Shamanism, spiritual midwifery, goddess groups are all possible supports.

Saturn is not all bad guy, he has much to offer as you work through the conditioned layers. Get a copy of Liz Greene’s book Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil.

Claim your sexuality more fully, the tantric goddesses are strong in you, the healing, kundalini goddess Hygeia is also on your Sun.